Red - Erica Spindler Mills & Boon Silhouette

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to take care of herself, no one else would. And as much as she loved her mother, she couldn’t help her, couldn’t save her from the fate she had resigned herself to.

      Becky Lynn leaned her head against the tub-back and pictured the places in her magazines, clean and lovely, populated by beautiful smiling people. She pictured the brilliant sun and the warm breeze, imagining both against her skin. It never rained in those places. There wasn’t any dirt, nor the lingering smell of sweat and rotting fields. In the places of her magazines, boys didn’t hurt girls just because they were ugly and poor.

      She would go there, to California; she would start a new life.

      Becky Lynn pulled the stopper from the drain and stood. Shivering, she dried herself, then wrapped the threadbare towel around her. She went to the bathroom door and cracked it open. The house slept. In the next room, her father snored.

      Even though he was impossible to wake out of his drunken slumber, Becky Lynn tiptoed across the hallway and into her room. She dressed quickly and quietly, then threw her remaining clothes into a duffel bag, her few knickknacks and toiletries, she retrieved her toothbrush, the shampoo and toothpaste. She’d saved everything she’d made at the Cut ‘n Curl over the past couple of years, everything left over after her father had taken his share, and hidden it under a loose floorboard. Careful not to make a sound, she retrieved and counted it, then stuffed it into her jeans pocket.

      Nearly two hundred dollars. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.

      She hesitated outside her parents’ door, then crept into their room. Her father’s slacks lay in a heap on the floor. She picked them up and searched one pocket, then the other. Her fingers closed over a couple crumpled bills. Hands shaking, she pulled them out. Twenties? Where had he gotten this money? she wondered. She didn’t care, he would only waste it on drink.

      She took the money, keeping one twenty and putting the other into her mother’s secret grocery stash on her way out of the house.

      At the front door, she stopped and turned back, taking one last look at the place she had called home for nearly seventeen years. She had called it home, but it had never been one. She had never been safe here, had never been loved.

      She would never be trapped again.

      As she slipped through the door, she thought she heard the sound of weeping—her mother’s weeping. Becky Lynn paused, her chest tightening. “Mama,” she whispered, taking an involuntary step back inside.

      The smell of whiskey filled her head, a sense of smothering gray with it. She shook her head and her senses cleared, a familiar picture filling her head. Of blue skies and palm trees, of brilliant sun and smiling faces. Becky Lynn squared her shoulders. She couldn’t help her mother, couldn’t save her, no matter how much she wanted to.

      The time had come to save herself.

      Hiking her duffel bag higher on her shoulder, Becky Lynn turned her back on the house and life she had always known, and stepped out into the cold, black night.

Book Two

      7

      Los Angeles, California

       1972

      The way eight-year-old Jack Gallagher figured it, women were about the best things in the whole world. He loved the way they smelled, sweet like flowers, fresh like sunshine. He loved the way they felt, soft and warm and smooth; he loved their curves, their pillows of perfumed flesh, loved the way they spoke to him, in voices that were gentle and mostly lilting.

      Jack’s earliest remembrances were not of his mother, his crib or toys, but of the changing parade of girl-models who had cuddled and stroked him, the girls who had given him kisses and candy, who had wiped his baby tears and brought him gifts.

      Many a time as an infant and toddler he had nestled his face into a pair of smooth, soft breasts, and basked in the pure joy of it. His mother, the most wonderful of all the wonderful women in the world, said he had the ability to turn even the most ill-tempered and demanding model into a candidate for Miss Congeniality with nothing more than an adoring look or smile.

      Men, on the other hand, he had learned, were not so easy to please. They had no time or use for a boy’s questions or curiosity. They made it plain that having him on the set was a nuisance they put up with only because of Sallie Gallagher’s abilities as a makeup artist, and only for as long as it suited their purposes.

      From the beginning, he understood the importance of staying out of the way, of staying quiet while the others worked. The Great Ones, the photographers who moved like kings through the studios, making demands and accepting total obedience and deference as their due, did not like being interrupted or disturbed, especially by a small, inconsequential boy. And their displeasure, when evoked, was both swift and fierce.

      So Jack had found places to hide and play, had created imaginary worlds where he was always the hero—the inside of a circular rack of clothes would become a castle or cave, a group of chairs shoved into a corner a magnificent sailing ship, the prop room an enchanted kingdom.

      From his secret places, he had seen and learned many things. The first time he’d seen what men and women did together, how they touched each other, he’d almost peed in his pants. He remembered staring in shock and thinking it gross, impossible. He remembered looking down at himself and wondering if his would ever get so big.

      He had also learned the rules of grown-up life: that the truth was negotiable, as was just about everything else in the world with the exception of artistic integrity; that life operated on the barter system—you gave someone something they wanted, you got something you wanted in return; and finally, he had learned that beautiful things were special. The most special. To have beauty in your possession was to have a prize, a measurable commodity worth as much—or more—than any other.

      Jack slumped onto the battered leather couch, shoved against the far wall of the busy studio. At eight, he was too old to play such games, too old to hide and pretend. Instead, he stayed in the background while The Great Ones worked. He watched. And made his plans.

      Made his plans because the last and most important thing he had learned from his secret hiding places was who he really was.

      Giovanni’s bastard brat.

      He hadn’t known what those words meant, not the time he’d first heard them, but they had stuck with him. They sounded important, although something about the way they’d been uttered had made him feel dirty, as though he’d done something he should be ashamed of.

      He had kept the words to himself, guarding them, turning them over in his head. When he had finally found the courage to ask his mother, she’d looked unhappy and upset, but had gently explained. He had nodded in understanding, and had never brought it up again. Neither had she.

      Jack drew his knees to his chest and studied The Great One. Giovanni was the greatest of all The Great Ones, considered the king of all the kings, the reigning monarch of fashion photography.

      His father. Giovanni was his father.

      Jack sucked in a deep breath, willing away his nerves, the tight fist of hope burning in his chest. Sissies and babies were nervous. And Jack Gallagher was neither baby nor sissy. He was the great Giovanni’s son, an important thing to be—he couldn’t be weak, or nervous, or too hopeful. It was time he started becoming a man, like Giovanni. His father.

      Jack cocked his chin proudly and pictured himself walking through the studio, his father’s arm thrown casually but possessively across his shoulders. He pictured the others’ looks, could almost hear their whispers—Did you know, Jack is Giovanni’s son…

      Jack had it all figured out; his mother had never told Giovanni that he was Jack’s father, she couldn’t have told. If she had, Giovanni wouldn’t brush by him as if Jack were nothing, he wouldn’t look through him as if Jack didn’t exist.

      She hadn’t told because he was already married, and she didn’t want to cause trouble with his wife. Jack drew his eyebrows together. He’d also considered that his mother

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